Malfunction
by Kosaten no Kokinatsuyosa
Summary: No monkey team member is ever alone, but one team member is feeling rather set apart from the rest. Otto Antauri friendship. Oneshot


Malfunction

Otto walked into the Relic Room, where the team kept mementos of their past battles and ordeals. The green monkey had come to put Antauri's old helmet, and a large memorial gear here for safekeeping. Smiling to himself, he placed the gear against the wall, and paused a moment, still holding the black helmet. Turning around, he placed the helmet on one of the pillar-like tables.

He was glad Antauri was back.

Without a leader, the team had been directionless. When Mandarin was exiled to the HOOP, Antauri had reluctantly taken the position as leader, because he had said another would come. And he had been right. When Chiro had transformed during that battle against the Skeleton King, and Antauri had left them, the team had fallen apart, just as they had when Sparx had been held captive by Scrapperton.

Antauri was the only one who really didn't seem to mind whenever the green monkey didn't understand something. He had always believed in him, even when the others were doubtful, like the time Shuggazoom had gotten taken over by that ooze-infected circus.

Realizing that he had arrived at Antauri's room, the green monkey shook the past from his thoughts. The automatic door was locked, which usually meant Antauri was meditating, and the green monkey hesitated, just as he always did.

"Antauri?" he called, fully expecting to hear his Second's typical "Come in," but this time, only silence greeted his sound receptors. "Antauri?" he asked again, a little louder. When the spiritual advisor still did not respond, Otto was worried. He entered the emergency access code into the small keypad next to the door, and it opened.

The now-silver monkey lay face-down on the floor. What worried Otto was that Antauri's body was not limp, as it would normally be if he was deactivated, but rigid and as stiff as a steel pole. His claws were activated too, the digits all spread wide. _This is not a good sign, _Otto thought.

Otto rushed to his teammate, and turned him on his back. The silver monkey stared back at him, optics online, but unmoving, and his expression a frozen plea for help.

Otto connected himself with Antauri's systems and soon found the crash log he was looking for. Antauri's vocal and mobility systems had crashed due to an insufficient power supply from his main processor. The silver monkey system, and the low power levels needed for meditation apparently didn't mix well. The robotic monkey was conscious, and could hear, but was helpless, unable to move or speak.

_Rebooting him ought to fix this,_ Otto thought, and transformed his hand to the right device. He carefully inserted it into the back of the argent monkey's head. Antauri's body jerked violently, and then went limp. The reboot took a few minutes, far longer than it ought to, in Otto's opinion. It seemed the robotic body had quite a few problems.

The silver monkey's systems began to come back online, giving off a low, mechanical whirl, which died down after a few moments. Antauri's optics activated fully, and he sat up, looking disoriented.

"Are you okay?" Otto asked him.

"I believe so Otto, thank you." He looked as if he wanted to say more, but was uncertain about doing so.

"What is it?" the mechanic asked him.

_There was no sound in the room except for a soft whirr that reminded him of the sound Gibson's computers made. He had heard that sound since he had first awoken in this strange new body, resounding from where his heart had been. For several hours now, that sound had been a part of the new way in which he saw this world, and he found it...disturbing. No longer would he hear the sound of his body alive. No longer could he relish in the simplicity of hearing his own heartbeat and the soft sound of his own breathing. Now there was just that irritating whirring, and Antauri became aware that it was growing louder. _

_He opened his eyes a moment, and his vision filled with static, and then cleared, yet another disturbing aspect of this new body. Everything was new and strange._ I suppose I truly have been reborn, more so than I realized at the time I spoke those words, _he thought. Antauri closed his eyes and attempted to resume his meditative state. He concentrated on the amount of energy his system was using and lowered it to the settings he assumed would do for meditation. Suddenly, the whirring filled his audio receptors as his processors went into overdrive. Alarmed, he opened, his eyes, and attempted to correct the problem he had inadvertently created, but his system was frozen. He fell to the ground, his body twitching, and Antauri tried and tried to regain control of himself._

_Then the twitching stopped, and every limb in his body extended to it's fullest. This was worse than the twitching. He tried to call for the others, Gibson, and Sparx, they were closest, but his lips refused to move. His vocal processors were disabled as well._ Chiro! _He thought, trying to reach Chiro through the Power Primate. He was met with a mental wall, and try as he might, he could not reach him. _I'm alone here,_ he thought._

"It's strange, to be perfectly aware of you surroundings, and yet be utterly helpless to change them, and unable to communicate," he mused softly. Otto looked at him. Things like that happened to robots, he had seen it before many times. _But Antauri's only been a robot a few days,_ he reminded himself.

"That crash really scared you didn't it?" He asked him.

"We've all had crashes from time to time, only..." He trailed off.

"When the robot monkey system crashes, it knocks you out and everything goes down with it," Otto finished for him. Antauri nodded.

"It terrified me," He confessed. "Because I usually meditate for hours on end, I was afraid no one would realize something had happened to me until there was an emergency, simply because no one would think to check on me."

Otto nodded in understanding, placing a hand on his shoulder. "We stay apart too much," he said. "You're up here meditating, Gibson's in his lab, Nova's usually training, Sparx does his piloting stuff, I'm in the workshop, and Chiro's usually with one of us." The mechanic had a sudden thought, and looked at his brother. "You need to have fun more!" he said.

Otto was right, Antauri realized. They needed to be together more, not just as a team, but as a family — a family that he had nearly disappeared from altogether. His near brush with death had made him realize that he had been so focused on the goal of the Verans — the goal of protecting the universe — that he hadn't taken the time to enjoy life simply because he was alive. Now he no longer had that ability as he had in an organic body. This mechanical one had a poor olfactory system, and no tactile system. He couldn't feel anything anymore. The taste of cotton candy, the feel of rain against his body, the touch of Otto's hand on his shoulder. He could detect the pressure, but he couldn't feel it. Trying to remember what a sensation felt like caused his systems even more problems than it had currently, because it confused his mechanical brain as it tried to sort out the memories from his originally organic-based mind.

"Come on, let me fix those bugs in your system, and then we can have some family time," Otto said grinning at the idea that had just occurred to him, and for the first time in a while, Antauri smiled.


End file.
